Nidification of Indian Birds. 339 



not point to the fact of the eggs being changed or tampered 

 with. On the other hand, the first-described eggs are not 

 unlike those mentioned in Hume's ' Nests and Eggs/ voh ii. 

 pp. 30, 31. 



50. Chelidon nepalexsis. {Oates, op. cit. ii. p. 271.) 

 During the end of April, 1895, I had occasion to visit a 

 Cachari village situated on the brow of a very rocky and preci- 

 pitous hill overlooking the Naga- Hills territory. Having 

 finished the business Avhich took me to the village, I was 

 able to bestow my attention on other matters, and I then 

 saw that several pairs of Martins were flying in and out of 

 some of the Cachari houses, and these flew so close to me 

 that I was enabled to identify them as Chelidon nepalensis 

 without taking the trouble to shoot one. Unfortunately, 

 the birds had not then begun to lay, and I could only find 

 two or three nests in a half-built state. These seemed to be 

 very much like the nest of the common English Martin : 

 that is to say, they were cup-shaped shells of mud, or rather 

 semi-cup-shaped, affixed to beams inside the houses. There 

 were then no finished nests, so I was unable to take any 

 measurements. I left word with the head man of the village 

 that I would give a reward to any one who would bring me 

 nest and eggs with, at least, one of the parent birds, and on 

 the 10th of May, when stopping in another place some five 

 or six miles distant, I had a nest, four eggs, and the remains 

 of a bird brought to me. 



The nest was, unfortunately, much broken, but it appeared 

 to have been of the usual shape, and had been fixed to one 

 of the rafters inside the liouse in the same manner as were 

 the partially-built nests I had myself seen. The lining was 

 a dense mass of feathers mixed with a few scraps of grass- 

 blades. Most of the feathers seemed to be those of fowls, 

 which the birds had collected in the village, but there were 

 also a few feathers o^ Megalcema murshallorum, easily recog- 

 nizable by their deep purplish-blue colour, and a good many 

 of Green Pigeons', which birds fed in great numbers on a 

 species of Ficus growing near the village. 



